Music In The Great War

Episodes

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20140706After sustaining an injury on the Eastern Front during the First World War, the Austrian concert pianist Paul Wittgenstein subsequently re-learned to play the piano with his left hand alone. He commissioned a number of new works, including these pieces by Korngold and Hindemith, as well as the more famous concerto by Ravel.

Korngold: Piano Concerto for the Left Hand

Howard Shelley (piano)

BBC Philharmonic

conductor Matthias Bamert

Hindemith: Piano Concerto for the Left Hand Op.29

Leon Fleisher (piano)

Symphony Orchestra of the Curtis Institute

conductor Christoph Eschenbach.

Piano concertos for the left hand by Korngold and Hindemith written after WWI.

20141109Music from two generations of British composers affected by the First World War, recorded earlier this year at the church at Shaw's Corner, the former home of George Bernard Shaw, now run by the National Trust. Tenor Benjamin Hulett performs settings of AE Housman poems with the pianist Christopher Glynn, and Radio 3 New Generation Artists Elena Urioste and Zhang Zuo perform Elgar's Violin Sonata.

Songs by Somervell, Butterworth, Gurney and Moeran

Elgar: Violin Sonata.

Music for voice, violin and piano by Somervell, Butterworth and Elgar.

Gramophones At The Front20140629How soldiers kept sane during World War I listening to gramophone recordings from home.

The manufacturers of gramophone records and players thought war would be a disaster for business. But by 1916 sales had doubled with the largest captive market in the world. Patriotic songs quickly gave way by 1915 to sentimental tunes about girlfriends and home. How did soldiers in the alienated landscape of the trenches maintain an emotional connection to happier times and places? ('If you were the only girl in the world' was the biggest selling tune of the war.) Soldiers loved to subvert songs with their own robust words and themes. As for recordings being made on the front, only one exists and is almost certainly a fake.

How soldiers kept sane during World War I by listening to gramophone recordings from home.

A series of programmes that follow the story of World War One through music and culture

Personal musical reactions to the First World War by Frank Bridge, a pacifist composer deeply disturbed by the war and Louis Vierne, whose Quintet reflects his own personal tragedy: he lost both his son and brother in the conflict.

Bridge: Cello sonata

Paul Watkins (cello)

Huw Watkins (piano)

Vierne: Piano quintet

Stephen Coombs (piano)

Chilingirian Quartet.

Music by Frank Bridge and Louis Vierne reflecting on the human tragedies of World War I.

Stalking The Hun20140625The Scottish gamekeeper, or ghillie, was obviously an asset to hunting down an elusive prey. They had unique experience of spotting tiny movements in the landscape. Lord Lovat formed his own regiment of Scouts during the Boer War. They wore elaborate camouflage and were described as 'half wolf and half jackrabbit.' But they really came to prominence during WW1.

Stalkers and 'glassmen' were advertised for in Scottish newspapers. Lovat succeeded in extending the age limit so he could recruit one man, Macpherson of Balavil, who was 62. The youngest was 42. They worked in pairs mainly as observers rather than snipers.

By the end of the war photographic reconnaissance replaced much of their scouting duties but their skills and mentality still exists in the SAS.

In 1918 Country Life reported that the war had a disastrous effect on the marksmanship of hunters which they put down to 'jumpiness' caused by the noise of shells. So the deer of Scotland may have been an unintended beneficiary of WW1.

How Scottish ghillies brought a new lethality to British sniping during WWI.

A series of programmes that follow the story of World War One through music and culture